Posts Tagged ‘Last Tide’
At CMJ, No Fast Track to Fame, but Plenty of IRLing
Salome, one of the few metal bands that performed at this year’s CMJ.
For D.C. bands, the takeaway from CMJ seems to have been this: It will not pluck you from obscurity, but it can’t hurt. Also: Don’t believe the hype.
“The myth that you can land the perfect agent or manager at a place like that—I don’t think it pays attention to the reality that you’ve been talking to that person for seven months already,” said Jesse Elliott, whose polymathic alt-country band These United States played a handful of shows during this year’s College Music Journal Music Marathon. The annual industry gathering featured over 1,000 artists, close to 100 venues, and around a dozen acts from the D.C. area.
Elliott’s got a point: Most of the young bands I heard chatter about during the festival—like Florida’s Surfer Blood, New York’s Freelance Whales, and London’s Golden Silvers and Mumford and Sons—had recording contracts, significant blog buzz, or both going in, not to mention full management teams in place. These are not bands whose success lives or dies according to an industry festival.
“Most of the bands at these festivals are already signed,” wrote Todd Hyman, who runs the District-based labels Carpark and Paw Tracks and hosted CMJ showcases for both, in an e-mail. “Though this year there seemed to be a preponderance of unsigned blog bands. Seems folks were complaining about that.”
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Shudder to Tweet
Sampling the thought streams of D.C. musicians past and present.
-my pack game is so official. you dont wanna see my tour tetris. forreal, i could fit a family of 6 into a fannypack.
-had my 1st facial (cant wait to hear from my mature ass twitter friends’ reply). attached suction cups&steam machines to the grill. relaxin!
Travis Morrison:
-Can tell when you aren’t playing with your original drummer. Even if he’s not that big a fan. Just sayin in case you were gonna get back …
-Woke up totally nostalgic for the early 80s baltimore orioles and googled lenn sakata.
-There is a “Halloween store” near my house that offers absolutely no costumes for women that aren’t conspicuously sexy. None.
-A 1986(!) Steve Reich interview tape unearthed! Talks about Ghana, Stravinsky, Charlie Parker, Bach. http://bit.ly/x31O5
-Oh man Pandora, what are you thinking? The “demo” version of Freebird? Freebird without the guitar solo is not Freebird.
Hear Last Tide’s Debut EP
Maudlin, noisy, and atmospheric, Last Tide is invested as much in mid-’80s navel-gazing as late-’80s shoegaze. I’m not sure if that makes the young D.C. four-piece kneegaze or thighgaze, but I do know that the group’s new EP, The Broken Places, is an engrossing study in dichotomies—the five songs are vociferous yet ebullient, miserable yet poppy, weather-worn yet insistent. The vocals, too, are diametric opposites: Keyboardist Libby Dorot’s are delicate, even ethereal—a perfect foil to guitarist Nate Frey’s large, searching baritone. Drummer Misha Alexander and bassist Rob Miller complete the group, and City Paper’s own Justin Moyer (aka Edie Sedgwick) engineered the recording.
Last Tide drops the EP in physical form in October, but for now, you can hear the whole thing on the group’s MySpace (although the version of “A Traitor In My Mind” is actually a shortened “single edit,” for those keeping score at home). And you can listen to the band live this weekend on WMUC’s Third Rail Radio program, Sunday at 6 p.m. at www.wmucradio.com (or 88.1 on your FM dial).
The group’s EP release show is Oct. 26 at the Black Cat Backstage with Austin’s Ringo Deathstarr and D.C.’s The State Department. Doors open at 9 p.m.
Electricity And Weight: NOMO @ DC9
Lest it be left unsaid: NOMO may make you get down, but they are serious dudes. A glance at bassist Matthew Golombisky, who has f-holes tattooed on his forearms, or baritone saxophonist Dan Bennett, who plays his instrument like he’s operating heavy machinery, will tell you exactly that. Not that they’re overly studious: These guys are the jazz heads at every music conservatory who’d rather be trading solos with Fela Kuti.
The great Nigerian bandleader’s mid-’70s Afrobeat casts a large shadow over NOMO’s often electronic take on the genre. The Ann Arbor, Mich., group — currently a sextet led by alto saxophonist Elliot Bergman — played an electrifying, hour-plus set last night at DC9, and it was easy to pick out other influences, too, from fusion-era Miles Davis to the recent ambassadors of Afrobeat coming out of Congo, the Saharan, and Lisbon, Portugal. Everything blended seamlessly but each component remained distinct — less like a melting pot, as Bergman suggested in an interview last year, and more like, say, an overstuffed sandwich.
